Onsite Coverage: No Clear Winners at Finovate Day 2

SAN FRANCISCO — Another day, another 36 companies climbed the stage at Finovate, the new financial technology show, where each participant gets exactly seven minutes to dazzle, or sometimes bewilder, the audience of investors, financial institution executives and analysts.

This year’s show, incidentally, was proclaimed to be the biggest ever, with attendance above 1,300.

Second-day presenters mixed brand-name players - such as Intuit, with a tweaked Mint personal financial manager, and Fiserv, which debuted a “Snap to Tag” mobile banking app aimed at integrating paper receipts into a digital lifestyle.

But there also were smaller companies such as Refundo, a non-bank aimed at an immigrant market, and Kofax, which debuted a robust account onboarding process built around the customer’s mobile device and a picture ID.

“The consumer always has a phone ad a picture ID with them. Using remote deposit capture with the phone, it is easy to identify them,” said Bruce Orcutt, a Kofax executive, in an interview.

Also winning buzz at Finovate with a remote imaging product was Allied Payment Network which, said CEO Ralph Marcuccilli in an interview, allows consumers to use their smartphones to point, shoot and pay bills.

He said that at least one large credit union will go live with this Picture Pay product imminently. The idea: bill payment on mobile phones has stalled because of the difficulty of data input on small form factor devices but using the camera is fast and easy.

At Finovate to support Allied Payment Network was Robb Gaynor, CTO at Malauzai, a mobile app partner with Catalyst, the big Texas-based corporate credit union. In an interview, Gaynor said that his customers who are using Picture Pay – presently banks – report higher than expected usage and they also are seeing very high success rates for submitted payment images.

One fact about this Finovate: no clear winner emerged in terms of eliciting wide and loud applause from a majority of attendees. Opinions often were sharply divided. For example: one credit union IT executive pointed to an exhibitor and proclaimed, “A non-starter. That will never take off.”

Moments later, a different executive – in response to a reporter’s question about presenters he planned to follow up with – pointed to that very same booth and indicated he was on his way there now, “This is something we’ve been looking for.”

Right there was Finovate 2013: Where so many good ideas competed for attention throughout a hectic two days.